Trip Stats
Trip Report
We got out of "bed" slightly before 8am, awaken by the sun and frigid temperatures. We had left Seattle at 2pm the preceding day and made it past Mountain Home, Idaho, when we decided to stop at 2am to get some sleep.
We packed up our sleeping bags and drove to a diner near Soldier Mountain Ski Resort to meet up with "The Dude", a fishing guide who Rob works with in Alaska. After a nice greasy breakfast, we drove to Ketchum and checked into our hotel. Trevor and I decided to go up to Galena Summit for the afternoon and explore the mountains.
We were unsure what to expect. Hartman had briefly talked with a friend who recommended Galena Summit, but we didn't have any other info to go by other than to park at the top of the mountain pass. We were on the snow around 1:30pm and preceded to skin up a ridge leading to Galena Summit. The snow conditions were strange by our standards, and varied considerably. In certain spots, the snow was hard-packed, frozen by the cold temperatures. Other aspects contained a slight sun crust, with about 16" of sugary and unconsolidated snow underneath. Yet other slopes contained 3" of sugary snow, followed by a thin sun crust, with more sugary snow underneath.
Coming from the Northwest, these snow conditions were something we were unfamiliar with and we were weary of skiing any steep slopes. Disregarding the snow stability, the conditions for skiing were not great, as the sun crust was just thick enough to hamper our turns.
Atop Galena Summit, we looked for some possible options, but didn't see much. There were some wide-open slopes leading down to the road that would be nice to lap on a powder day. We decided to head down to our right and over to another ridge to scope out a possible ski tour for the following day. Upon reaching the next ridge, we both realized that good turns were not on order for the day, nor for the following day. We headed back towards the car and made some decent turns on some hard-packed snow.
We were a little disappointed, but at least we had gotten out, gotten a little exercise and experienced beautiful views of the Sawtooth mountains. Idaho has a lot to offer...
